People's Post Rally

[Martin Walsh]

The biggest CWU rally on People's took place yesterday in Manchester Cathedral. The Cathedral was packed and there was up to 5000 people outside.

The speakers included Dave Ward , Terry Pullinger , Jeremy Corbyn , Owen Jones , Val Bennett.

There was media from all major TV and newspaper outlets.

The campaign to protect the memberships term and conditions from Ofcom and the impact of Privatisation.

It is clear that Ofcom want to down dial the USO from 6 days to 4 days which will devastate jobs , they do not support the Legal protections which they believe hinder efficiency.

They are critical of the amount of Pay which OPGs receive they think is well above the competition.

They believe that Royal Mail's pricing is anti competitive and want to restrict Royal Mail's ability to charge to allow more competition.

They also want to review efficiency in delivery offices as they do not understand why offices within postcodes have varying efficiency rates and why some are on different start times and different attendance patterns than others. They also have stated that some offices are finishing earlier than others. They use the freedom of information act to obtain this information.

On the privatisation front it is clear that the shareholder want to gain more profit and are looking at further delivery office amalgamations where they can maximise the value of selling the real estate.

On Pensions Royal Mail are not paying what they should be paying into the pension scheme therefore creating a deficit and there is a real risk that deficit over time may threaten the future of our pension scheme. Royal Mail are saying no privatised company would pay over 30% to safeguard pensions.

Over and above this we have 3 big projects one is walk optimisation which seeks to have just one wave of sequencing mail which will be the second wave coming into your office meaning later starts and more part time jobs. This will impact the mail centre and MGV drivers hours.

The second is that they are attempting to process and integrated traffic and hours recording computer package which will be used for resourcing in the future. This will mean all OPGs will be required to clock in and out using a swipe system and they want this done after every bit of the operation ie prep , IPS and Delivery. This will then record accurately how many hours an office did on IPS , Prep and Delivery against the traffic.

And finally they want a total flexible workforce one which does not have a set duty but is flexible to work according to workload of any day or week.

I realise a lot of members have genuine issues in the workplace which the union needs to address but equally we have to also understand the threat to our industry and fight that as well. Hence why the People's Post is such an important fight !

[Rommagic]

How much of this will they achive?.

[BeamishStout]

With all the bean-counting likely to take place within the next few years perhaps RM can also cast their attention to ways and means of assessing actual mail volumes that arrive in LDOs. One tray might contain 100 items yet another only 50. Yet another untruth spouted out is the accuracy of these figures. In truth nobody knows from one day to the next. Another area RM needs to get better at is the advance notice of large bulk postings coming into the system and, more important, better LDO 'forecasting traffic' based on what is actually arriving in the pipeline rather than what arrived 12 months ago.

[NewPostieUK]

One wave - that means one load of mail delivered to the delivery office every day. How will they get the same amount of mail to delivery offices with four deliveries as they do now with twelve? (twice a day six days a week). Or could a 'wave' be any number of lorry loads?

[pants123]

OFCOM, put them on minimum wage, make them more flexable, remove their terms and conditions, see how they like it.......

That wont happen, while their sat in their silly ivory tower,, their only human but they think they are Gods.....,

There a disgrace more like..

[Darren Bent]

To me why do we need to deal with Ofcom as we are now a private company and we shouldn't have to deal with their rules or obsession of improving effectively nonsense. Think it is time to close them down.

[halfull]

all of this bells and whistles rubbish gains nothing, just do something about our daily workload!

[k979aaa]

OFCOM who pays these peoples salaries? we do whilst we are paying these parasites to investigate our working practises who investigates them? These quangos should be wound up and those who have found to have profited personally be strung up!

[taxi4leighton]

what is their remit.they seem to be concerning themselves with matters outside their remit

[Darren Bent]

What do you think it will be like for Royal Mail and postal workers without those Ofcom. Just asking.